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No Exit

Wrong in its presumptions and wrong in its intentions, the Election Commission is barking up the wrong tree in its decision banning exit polls and election-related advertisements on television. And we haven't even started talking about the threat to freedom of expression.

Yet.

Chief Election Commissioner M S Gill says the August 20 move, which was turned down by the Supreme Court today, was aimed at preventing 'poor and illiterate voters' from being easily influenced, and at providing a 'level-playing field' to all contestants (emphasis added).

"Don't you think that constantly battering 'poor and illiterate people' with advertisements will influence them?" he asks. (PTI, September 11)

Yes, it does. So?

Meanwhile: • If Sushma Swaraj could learn Kannada, why couldn't Sonia Gandhi? • If Sonia manages to win from Amethi 'and' Bellary, will the BJP and its allies drop the issue of her foreign origins and not for a constitutional amendment that the NDA has promised? • Sharad Yadav acquitted in Jain hawala case. SC says Satish Sharma needn't pay Rs 50 lakh penalty for corruption. Jagdish Tytler absolved of role in 1984 riots. CBI says Tanwar case involving Sitaram Kesri is closed. Have we been completely wrong about our politicians? • Given the carnage in East Timor, and the general record of democracy, freedom and human rights in countries of east of China and west of Japan, isn't the phrase "Asian Values" an oxymoron; and an insult to countries like India? • If Indian cricketers love their country so much, why is it that 90 per cent of the products they endorse are foreign?

Elections are all about parties and candidates "influencing" the electorate to vote for them and them alone, and nobody else; all about "persuading" people with programmes and promises. It's our right to be wooed in every manner possible before we make the final choice, even if we end up finally making the wrong choice.

Tragically, the gatekeeper of our democracy thinks that shouldn't be happening, especially with the two sections of society which need to be "influenced" the most: the poor and the illiterate. And through the medium most suited for "influencing" huge masses of them across a vast geographical spread, instantly: television.

Why?

Setting out to shield the 'poor and illiterate' is a kangressi fig leaf that most bureaucrats cover themselves with, thanks to the legacy of 45 years of Congress' rule. Dr Gill shows how by presuming, wrongly again, that the 'poor and illiterate' are incapable of making the right choice if they're exposed to exit polls or poll ads.

It's an insult to "50 per cent of India's population" whose interests alone, Dr Gill claims, he has at heart.

How the 'illiterate' will read and interpret polls and ads if they are illiterate is something only Dr Gill knows. As for the 'poor', have we all been wrong in our belief that they're 'en masse' bought over by cash, booze and other sugar candies that politicians manage to smuggle up to them in spite of the model code?

OK, that may be hair-splitting, but Dr Gill's new role as The Protector wears thin simply because the 'poor and illiterate' have always been one of this country's "vote-banks". Assured shores of support for our political parties to cash in. By nature, they require little intellectual "influencing"; material "influencing" always does the trick.

Instead of reversing the trend, the EC diktat maintains the status quo.

Also, as statistics show, it's the 'poor and illiterate' who have been tirelessly keeping their tryst with democracy in election after election. Thanks to the arrogant nonchalance of the 'rich and literate', as evidenced in declining voting percentages in towns and cities, it's they who have been keeping our country running.

Dr Gill and his not-so-Sancho Panzas want to deny the privilege of choice, such as it is, to those very people.

In effect, what Gill & Co are implying is that if they are exposed to exit polls and poll ads, the 'poor and illiterate' can be wooed to make the wrong choice that can imperil the 'rich and literate'. Considering that the 'poor and illiterate' constitute the majority of our voters, are they also suggesting that the majority can be wrong?

Is there anything, anything at all, that the EC can offer as evidence to prove that the 'poor and illiterate' are "influenced" by poll ads? Has it conducted a sample opinion poll or held a focus-group to back its claim?

Denying parties and candidates access to their most cost-effective instrument of influence when every other medium -- newspapers, magazines, radio, posters, pamphlets, public meetings and now, the Internet -- is available to them, not only beats common sense, but also runs counter to the EC's avowed dream of bringing down poll expenses.

Dr Gill's colleague, G V G Krishnamurthy, says the poll ad-ban was limited only to television and did not include the print medium because "any political party with the moneypower could monopolise the airwaves."

Hasn't it always been so, GVGji, in spite of the model code?

If the EC always intended to ensure a level-playing field, why then did it have to raise the deposit amount that has spelt finis to the electoral hopes of inconsequential Independents and allows only the monied to contest polls? Answer: the greater common good.

The point is, the majority of our parties can afford television ads whether they say so openly or not. Since they are going to warm the majority of the 544 seats in the Lok Sabha, they are entitled to make out their case to voters. But to protect a minority of parties/candidates without the wherewithal to "influence" the 'poor and illiterate', the majority is being shortchanged.

Clearly, what the EC should have been arguing for is "clean" election ads, as opposed to vicious ads that, for instance, the Congress has unleashed on Telugu television. What it went for is a total ban that any court of justice will throw out, as a division bench of the Andhra Pradesh high court did vis-a-vis the Congress ads.

Indeed, as the AP high court noted on September 8: 'People cannot be deprived of the right to know about the people who intend to govern them.... The restriction on the right to reach people is arbitrary and violative of constitutional provisions.' (The Hindu, September 9)

In the case of opinion and exit polls, too, the EC should have urged for a cleaner, more transparent process. Instead, it went for a blanket month-long ban till polling ends on October 3. What it got, therefore, was a public pasting from the BJP-led caretaker coalition.

'How could the EC infringe upon the fundamental rights to information and expression?' asked Attorney-General Soli Sorabjee in the SC.

The BJP's perception that the National Democratic Alliance is sailing to a majority may have been the sole motivation in arguing for due coverage for opinion and exit polls on television and in the press. For, otherwise, the Undivided Hindu Family of 23 has a rather dubious passion for the freedom of expression as has been evident.

Still, the BJP stand is beyond reproach. Because if you allow the EC to ban this, you don't know what they'll want to ban next.

There are two things the EC is saying as regards polls. First, it has told the Supreme Court that 'the Commission apprehends a serious impairment of the fairness of the entire election process if opinion polls conducted in areas where polls have already been held, are allowed to be published... Publication of opinion polls is bound to give an impression to the average voter that in so far as the states where elections have already been held, the opinion poll is indicative of the manner in which the franchise has been exercised.'

Second, Dr Gill has gone to town hinting that the ban on polls was imposed because the integrity of parties, pollsters and the media was suspect. 'Opinion polls engineered to support any particular party can influence the voter.' (The Indian Express, September 9)

There is a grain of truth in the first claim. Given the staggered nature of our poll process, an exit poll showing one party ahead or behind can prompt voters in constituencies still to go to the polls to back the leader or shore up the laggard. Respectively. However, either possibility, I submit, can only strengthen our democracy, and help realise the mirage of "stability" all of us are chasing.

However, giving into the EC demand on this count alone would have a cascading effect because the EC -- or the government in power -- can then go one step ahead and ask for restrictions on press and television reports describing voter-mood, voter-turnout, the works, all in the name of not "influencing" voters who are yet to vote.

But on "pushed-up" opinion/exit polls, Dr Gill is on surer footing, although he gives pollsters and their patrons far greater credit than they deserve.

Remember Tamil Nadu, 1998?

As one who has dealt with polls of both sorts, I can vouch that there is much that transpires in the commissioning and execution that isn't cricket. Indian polls are extraordinarily unscientific and utterly unreliable. The only reason they find favour among parties and editors is because they're prepared to do their master's bidding.

Star News, for instance, has run a couple of dozen polls this season without meeting the basic criteria of poll reporting. There is no mention of the sample size, no mention of the constituencies covered or even their number, no mention of the dates on which the poll was conducted.

In publishing Jain TV's exit poll indications of the first round, The Times of India has fallen prey to the same weaknesses. No details of sample size, no details of the constituencies covered, no mention of the margin of error in reporting, no nothing.

The reason why our polls are so shoddy is simple: there are more fly-by-night operators in the polling business than in the courier industry. And then, given the size of India and the size of their staff and budget, gleaning through newspapers and magazines and spending long hours at press clubs can give them only so much accuracy.

Few, if any, pollsters can back up the claims they make in print with the kind of fieldwork that ought to have produced them. Only one agency has the guts to list the names of field workers who were involved in conducting the poll. Given such obvious shortcomings, Dr Gill is well within his rights to doubt their authenticity.

The sudden emergence of Jain TV as a torchbearer of exit polls is not an accident. Run by the former BJP MP, Dr J K Jain, it has as much commitment to journalism as to psephology. Dr Gill has therefore enough reason to suspect, as indeed he perhaps did when The Pioneer pushed internal opinion polls conducted for the RSS on unsuspecting Delhi readers the last time round.

A general appeal to observe a few guidelines by way of self-discipline would have carried the day. But Dr Gill has been at pains to explain that there was no "personal agenda" behind the ban on the publication of the polls although the retention of Congress spokesman Kapil Sibal, a noted SC lawyer, as the EC counsel has unfortunately lent a political angle to what is clearly a grave freedom of expression issue.

But as Pratik Kanjilal noted in The Indian Express, opinion polls are to elections what commentary is to cricket: pure entertainment. By banning them, as cartoonist Surendra wryly noted in The Hindu, the EC is spoiling the voter's chance of fooling politicians with false promises by banning opinion polls. Indeed.

Krishna Prasad